The Making of the English Working Class

Thompson, E. P.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140136037 ISBN 13: 9780140136036

Publisher: Penguin, 1991

A book that revolutionised our understanding of English social history. E. P. Thompson shows how the English working class emerged through the degradations of the industrial revolution to create a culture and political consciousness of enormous vitality.

Review:

Thompson's work combines passion and intellect, the gifts of the poet, the narrator and the analyst (Eric Hobsbawm Independent)

A dazzling vindication of the lives and aspirations of the then - and now once again - neglected culture of working-class England (Martin Kettle Observer)

Superbly readable . . . a moving account of the culture of the self-taught in an age of social and intellectual deprivation (Asa Briggs Financial Times)

An event not merely in the writing of English history but in the politics of our century (Michael Foot Times Literary Supplement)

The greatest of our socialist historians (Terry Eagleton New Statesman)

Synopsis:

This account of artisan and working-class society in its formative years, 1780 to 1832, aims to add a dimension to our understanding of the 19th century. The author shows how the working class took part in its own making and re-creates the whole-life experience of people who suffered loss of status and freedom, who underwent degradation and who yet created a culture and political conscience of great vitality.